Sunday, March 6, 2011

There is no “Cloud” in Cloud Computing

Last year Larry Ellison (Oracle CEO) had an outburst about the entire buzz regarding “the cloud”. He was amused with the cloud being seen as a new technology that was going to change the world of IT as we see it. One year later, his comments that Cloud is not a new technology, simply a new business model for delivering more of the same continue to hold true. This 3 minute video is worth watching from the 2:15 mark onwards.

In my discussions with business (not IT) leaders, the cloud continues to be seen as a new technology that eliminates in-house IT. The fact that cloud computing is a new model of delivery, NOT a new technology is overlooked. Although, cloud has many advantages the fundamental fact that it is a new way of doing more of the same needs to be repeatedly communicated. Cloud is a business enabler, not a business changing proposition. New revenue channels will need to be based on innovative ideas, simply moving to the cloud is not going to bring new business.

4 comments:

Cloud is quite simply an alternate approach to delivering business and IT services; The innovation is in reducing the operations and maintenance costs of the cloud that may be managed internal (private) or external (public); The technical architecture presnted by the cloud computing, if done right, may present improved scalibility, performance and up time drawn by policy and SLAs.